A webhost has come under pressure from Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN for providing a Wordpress-based anti-censorship tool which unblocks, among other sites, The Pirate Bay. The Hollywood-funded group says that in the face of the host's refusal to comply with the takedown, it is now considering filing a criminal complaint. A lawyer specializing in IT law has today described the threat as "baseless."

Back in January we reported on the fruition of a new anti-censorship project.

The resulting ‘RePress’ tool was developed by webhosting company Greenhost and allows anyone with a WordPress blog to create a proxy for sites subjected to Internet censorship around the world.

The tool’s creators list many usage examples, such as unblocking Amnesty.org, Blogspot, Wikileaks, TorProject, plus the one that caught our eye – The Pirate Bay. But by adding Pirate Bay unblocking functionality to their tool, Greenhost have now attracted the attention of Hollywood via their very own Dutch proxy – anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

The All4xs site where RePress is hosted is reporting that BREIN has ordered them to take down the RePress plugin on the basis that it’s a dedicated Pirate Bay unblocking tool. BREIN believes that since it has won several cases recently against sites offering Pirate Bay proxies – not least against the Dutch Pirate Party – All4xs should take note and comply.

Greenhost, and by extension All4xs, see things rather differently. They say that RePress is very much a generic tool since it unblocks a range of sites and is not designed to specifically unlock The Pirate Bay. On that basis they have refused to comply with the takedown.

“This plugin allows people who live in dictatorships such as China or Iran to still access the open Internet. This is vital in a society that is increasingly dependent on digital resources,” wrote Green Host Director Sacha van Geffen in his response to BREIN.

“All4xs.net will stay online with all content intact.”

But according to the anti-piracy outfit, failure to comply with their demands could have serious repercussions, including the filing of a criminal – not civil – complaint against Greenhost. Arnoud Engelfriet, a lawyer specializing in Internet law at the ICTRecht law firm, told TorrentFreak that he believes the threat lacks credibility.

“The criminal complaint would be an allegation of criminal contribution to copyright infringement (secondary infringement). That’s a baseless accusation in my view,” he explained.

“The law explicitly protects hosting providers against criminal liability, as long as they comply with a takedown order from the court. BREIN admits that Greenhost is a hosting provider (‘intermediary’) because their claim for a takedown is based on a Copyright Law provision directed against intermediaries.”

However, according to Engelfriet there is an even more important issue at hand.

“The State’s Attorney (‘Openbaar Ministerie’) has a longstanding policy of not prosecuting copyright infringement unless it is extremely large-scale, threatens the public health or has connections with organized crime.

“A few years back a case against an Edonkey-index site was thrown out because the court said the prosecution had not demonstrated how they alleged infringement met the criteria of the policy,” Engelfreit concludes.

Dutch news outlet Webwereld predicts that BREIN will now move to obtain an ex-parte court ruling against Greenhost in order to force them to comply.